Running Backwards

by Stefan Beck

Although its author is an African-American, John McWhorter's Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America will, unfortunately, not earn him the attention, much less the admiration, of the black community's leadership. He charges that blacks have done themselves a disservice by entrenching themselves in a cult of victimology, separatism, and anti-intellectualism. Many see McWhorter's book as an affront, rather than a boon, to America's struggle against racism. Certainly, his analysis threatens the position of political leaders who exploit the destructive ideologies McWhorter identifies. That those who would most benefit from the book may ignore it, however, is symptomatic of the self-sabotage McWhorter identifies.

Understandably, then, McWhorter opens with a defensive posture. White liberals, too, will probably accuse McWhorter of shunting onto blacks responsibility for the crimes committed against them by bigoted whites. In his preface, McWhorter preempts this criticism. While he does not indict African-Americans for encouraging or causing racism (which, he maintains, they certainly do not), he does reproach the black community for adopting self-defeating measures in their attempt to, as the slogan goes, "trace it, face it, and erase it."

The first of these measures is the popular cult of victimology, "seductive because there is an ironic and addictive contentment in underdoggism." The house of victimology rests on a foundation of seven "articles of faith," misconceptions shared by self-proclaimed victims. Pertinent anecdotes and striking statistics reduce these articles of faith to "either outright myths or vast exaggerations." They serve only to widen a rift between white and black which, if it still exists, has been steadily narrowing for at least forty years.

To disprove the "common sense" that "black people get paid less than whites for the same job," McWhorter cites an oft-quoted statistic: "In 1995, the median income for black families was $25,970, while the figure for whites was $42,646." The difference between these two numbers became a rallying cry: "The figures were quickly translated into the claim that 'black people make 61 percent of what white people make' and taken to mean that black people are regularly paid less than whites for the same work." But that conclusion is incorrect, for two reasons. First, the black community includes a larger proportion of unwed mothers, often on welfare, whose income is understandably low.

Second, a large number of blacks, around 56 percent of the total, live in the southern states. Compared to the rest of the country, wages in the South are depressed, for workers of all races. In the end, the median income of the average black two-parent family is about $5,700 less than that of a comparable white family, a difference "extremely difficult to pin on racism."

McWhorter similarly refutes notions that "most black people are poor" and that "the number of black men in prison is due to a racist justice system." In 1996, one in four black families were poor by official standards. In 1995, one in five black families lived in ghettoes. McWhorter also affirms that the number of black men in prison is proportional to the rate at which they commit crimes; there's no disproportionate rate of arrest and conviction for black and white males.

Though he effectively pulls the rug out from under the cult of victimology, McWhorter treats its disciples respectfully, in an effort to deprogram them. While some racism exists, he says, its exaggeration locks African-Americans in a negative mode of thought, in which the experience of anything verging on bigotry at once disgusts and delights one with its affirmation of victimhood. This is perverse.

Victimology condones poor performance, failure, and criminality. It is an affront to actual civil rights leaders of the past, not to mention notions of black progress. At the same time, though, it is an attractive mode of thought; McWhorter, in his youth, "espoused it wholeheartedly." While victimology felt good and absolved him of guilt or responsibility, these immediate pleasures make it, over time, a losing strategy.

The cult of separatism, according to McWhorter, is a detachment from mainstream culture--that is, "white culture." Prototypically, a young black woman, noticing McWhorter's copy of Jane Eyre, remarked that she would never read "something like that," a "white book." This is a dangerous parochialism. Are the roots of black anti-intellectualism, another self-sabotage, so far off?

Of course, a single anecdote does not prove a theory. Alongside personal stories, many from McWhorter's own experiences as a professor of linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley, are references to studies and hard data. Some invisible condition--cultural, the self-identification as victim--prevents African-Americans, particularly students, from developing a love of learning.

Also at play is "white condescension," the tacit racism of whites who allow and encourage the self-defeating victim's mentality--what George W. Bush has dubbed "the soft bigotry of low expectations." Although mostly unconscious, white condescension is more insidious and damaging than the bigotry of an ignorant few. No easy, short-term solutions exist, however, so we will have to do the difficult: acknowledgement and conscious correction--a stern application of what should be common sense.

McWhorter suggests that the African-American community reject "victimology chic." He puts it plainly: "No, things are not perfect--but let's face it: There are millions and millions of people on earth who would kill for the lives of all but a few black Americans today, and there have been untold billions of people who have triumphed amidst conditions unspeakably worse. We sell ourselves short to pretend otherwise."

African Americans should turn separatist tendencies into a celebration of what is unique to their culture. This explicitly does not entail a rejection of everything "not black." Only by embracing the best of all cultures will American society, in its entirety, unite and thrive.

McWhorter's are constructive ideas. Many, however, will mistake Losing the Race as an attack on blacks, or as proof of the author's self-loathing or "Uncle Tom-ism." One might take issue with McWhorter's style of scholarship and anecdotal evidence. There are also reasonable grounds for disagreement on several points, exceptions to the stern rules he sets down.

But to dismiss the brunt of McWhorter's argument on these grounds is to miss the point. Losing the Race is a criticism, as its title implies, but it also prescribes a course of action.

Even when his smaller points occasionally fall short, McWhorter, in his stern and sympathetic tone, addresses problems and presents solutions with a clarity absent in works of (purportedly) similar scope. Given a chance, Losing the Race may be seen in the future as a crucial milestone in the effort, as McWhorter puts it, to "bring African-Americans at last to true equality in the only country that will ever be their home."